The fences are down, safety precautions are up, and the new skate park in Nipomo is now available for everyone to enjoy.
The grand opening of the skate park will take place next weekend but skaters are welcome to enjoy the park at Nipomo Community Park off Tefft Street starting now, from 7 a.m. until dusk.
The soft opening of the new Nipomo Skate Park took place Friday.
The park features bowls, quarter pipes, and grind ledges for skaters to enjoy.
“We're just extremely grateful and happy to have it open," said Don Melin, San Luis Obispo County Parks Superintendent. "People in the community just waited so long for this.”
“We heard about the breaking ground in August of last year, 2022, and we were so excited right off the bat. We were like, there’s going to be a new skate park in Nipomo,” said Sierra Gainer, Arroyo Grande resident.
Construction on the $3.5 million long-awaited project took about a year.
The area includes an art pole painted by students at Dana Elementary School where rangers will mount broken skateboards donated by local skaters
“It's got a big open area. You've got the deep bowl, the larger bowl here, and then you've got the plaza and it's just got a lot of open area. It’s great for all different levels of skaters,” Melin said.
A common compliment has been how smooth the skating surface is.
“It reminds me of the parks in San Diego, which are like the best skate parks in the world. It feels like that quality and the concrete is super smooth. I really like it,” said Ryland Beaudoin, Arroyo Grande resident.
“I like dance skating and like doing little spins and stuff, so I’m really grateful that there's so much flat ground to skate on and then we've got some nice little ramps and then we've got the big bulls over here that I’ll work up to eventually,” Gainer said.
“I could see myself coming here probably three or four times a week and I have five ramps in my house, so that actually says a lot," Beaudoin added. "If I didn't have ramps in my house, I'd be here every day because this is a really, really nice park. And with it being so close, you can't beat that.”
Funding for the 10,000-square-foot park came from parks public facility fees and two grants from California State Parks through the Proposition 68 Parks Bond Act.
The project took more than five years to design through workshops.
The grand opening event is taking place on Saturday, May 6 at 10 a.m.
Nick Franco, director of Parks and Recreation for San Luis Obispo County, says the overall cost of the skate park was substantially higher than the initial estimate primarily due to the cost of concrete and other materials.
Franco says a main gas line under the area also needed to be relocated.
Grant funding helped pay for the project and the remainder was paid for from Parks Public Facilities Fees, according to Franco.
